Water holds a certain quality of fear in it. It calls out to us.
‘Come closer,’ it says. ‘feel the soft brush against your skin, hear the rush of movement, smell the sweetness in the air.’
But it hides a deadly truth; an end-all solution to life.
10 days before Christmas 2018, my heart broke for the first time. In my mind, we’d been together for 2 years, but in reality, it was 5 months short of that. I was only in my first semester of college, but I was thinking about proposing to her. I knew several people my age with families and homes, despite being teenagers. I wondered how I could now have no connection to someone I wanted to marry, all within minutes. I think I cried for hours without moving, frozen.
I won’t say it was only the breakup that made me lose feeling in my body; numbness was a recurring symptom of mine, starting some 9 years prior, with intermittent phases of abject sorrow. That Christmas I felt no joy in my body, and on new year’s I went to a stranger's house and drank myself into oblivion for the first time.
How could drug abuse not appeal to someone who wanted to disappear? Anything to stop my brain from assaulting me, anything to fall asleep, anything to slow down. Alcohol was never very hard to procure, even as an 18 year old. There were always wine bottles in the refrigerator door, or a huge box of white claws which would look the same with just one missing as it would without. Not only that, one visit to a siblings house could allow for a bong rip, or even a dab circle.
I didn’t do any of that. I suffered in silence. I reveled in the pain, the self-inflicted bullying, the worthlessness of it all.
I don’t know at what point I became obsessed with the bridge. I never walked across it, but I have a vivid memory of it anyways. It would always be nighttime, but the lights of the city would drown out the stars, with only the moon beaming down on me. I would grip the cold metal of the fence on the edge and stare into the churning dark mass hundreds of feet below. It was then that I’d hear it.
‘Come closer.’ It would say, and I’d want to, with a vile, poisonous passion that made my knees weak.
Many times, I’d come back from the memory in the driver’s seat of my car. My therapist said putting my windows down would help me ground myself, but I took it too far. It was always down despite the weather, even if it would turn my fingers blue. My knuckles would twitch on the stirring wheel, and I could hear the river calling me, telling me to visit. But I’d squeeze my eyes tight instead, start my car and drive the other way. I swear I could feel its gaze on my back the whole way home.
I have a thing with dreams. They're always vivid, to the point that if they’re realistic enough, I will mistake them for memories. Every night without fail I dream. Sometimes I’m even lucid. I have a favorite, a rare one, that leaves me light in the morning. Soaring through the sky, floating, breaking free from the constant drag of gravity; the definition of a dream, just without the ‘come true’ part. Flying. I attribute this to my love of heights, and to falling. Drop zone is one of my favorite rides, next to the big swings. I’m obsessed with the wind in my hair, the views, the free form feel. I always said I wouldn’t mind dying if I could just fly once.
I had to quit working as a host. It was partially the environment, the people, the stress. Most nights I’d close, leaving the building at 11:30, bone weary, feet aching, driving those windy back roads in the pitch. One night a black cow appeared suddenly in the road, and I swerved at the last second, death chuckling as I passed him by at 50 miles per hour. I let myself sob the rest of the way home; I was sad that I wished I had hit him.
The main reason I had to leave was the broken glass and the knives. Clearing tables with 4 hours of sleep in me, it wasn’t hard to break a dish. I’d freeze up at the sight of the shards, mind captured, fingers reaching out, watching the deep red trickle down my peach skin. Someone would say, ‘Go get a Band-Aid.’ It would sound like an echo from far away, and I’d think about broken glass all night long. Steak knives were just as bad. Look at the twinkle in the low light, they must be so sharp. Would it cut me open if I slide my digit down the side?
The winter nights piled snow up on my wind shield. I’d sit in my car blasting the windshield with heat, wrapped up in a blanket, alone in the parking lot. It was always so quiet. But winter ended and so did my job.
The spring time came and with it, my cat’s diagnosis of diabetes. In those early days I’d shake with anxiety thinking if I missed her shot by an hour, she’d die, and so would my last bit of heart. My lungs would empty, and tears would leak from broken pipes in my head. Bathrooms became my public safe haven, sobs muffled by the palm of my hand, fingernails biting into my cheeks as someone pissed in the stall next to me.
I always hated the summer. The heat filled up the moisture in the air, making Kentucky a perfect oven. My body insulates heat, perhaps due to the fat, and I melt away, my brain slipping out of my ears.
That summer, we flew into New York, and the concrete around us baked the garbage on every corner. Manhattan was surrounded by bridges, and the water grinned evilly from below them. The city was full of poison, capital driven mindlessness, nature artificial in the best of cases. I felt my humanity drain away every night that we slept in our dingy air bnb, dreadful mug reflected in the shady mirrors on every wall of the room. When we came back home, I knew I had lost part of my soul there.
In the fall, school started again. I thought I was ready to date, but I was lying about that empty hole in me. It was only shaped like her, and no one else would fit.
One night after work, I drove up to UC to meet a girl I didn’t know. She was 6 years older than me, with silky black hair and olive skin. Her eyes were like a panther, ready to pounce and devour me whole. I found her in a bar, sipping whisky. It tasted like oil and felt like fire in my throat, becoming a bonfire inside me. We laid on stones and looked at the constellations, talking about life, about nothing, about the end. She invited me back to her apartment and I went. I chose an empty wine bottle amongst the collection in her closet, and swung with all my might, shattering it on her back porch. The shards excited me and we laughed like mad men, before she took me by the hand to her bed.
‘Stay the night,' she said, brushing my cheek.
I didn’t.
It was 9 o’ clock when my shift ended at the rec center as the new graphic designer. I dreaded the long drive, the temptation of letting go of the wheel, of closing my eyes for the last time. I wandered through the building next door, peering through a window to see an old lady staring back at me. She was cleaning the floor, all alone, and asked me if I was a serial killer.
“I don’t think so.” I said, and she let me inside. She smelt like cigarettes and her name was Susannah.
Susannah found out where I worked and would visit me every Friday night. She would talk about politics, the liberal agenda, her experience with homelessness, god. One day she suggested mental illness was fake, all these labels kids seemed to have now a’ days, a ruse for the medical industry to profit from our poor stupid brains.
“I THINK ABOUT KILLING MYSELF EVERYDAY.”
She held me in her arms, stroking my head, cooing in my ear. She squeezed me so hard that I couldn’t forget I was alive.
After a couple of weeks, she stopped visiting me. I came in and found a manila folder of my desk, full of print outs; suicide hotlines, counseling offices, resources galore. She left me with a story; her sister’s suicide. She wished she had reached out to her, she wished she had been there, held her like she had for me. She told me that God wanted me to be here, that the people in my life, wanted me, to be here.
Because of her, I told my mom how I felt.
I was driving to school afterwards and my Dad called me. His voice was thick.
‘I’m sorry,' he croaked. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’
He told me that if I left, he would too. He told me he loved me more than anything in the world.
When I hung up, I had to pull over. My heart was breaking too loud.
Afterwards, I went to the doctor. I answered questions, baffled them with my responses. They asked me if I wanted to go to a mental hospital, and I declined, scared of disappearing, of people knowing that I have a problem. They prescribed me anti-depressants, ready for pick up immediately. I cried in the Walmart parking lot, shaking, knowing I was finally doing something, anything, to get better.
For a while all I felt was tired, and the call of my bed, but that was fine by me. I stopped hearing the whispers when I was near the water. I never thought of the bridge when I climbed into my car after a long day.
It took a long time for me to thaw out. I didn’t realize it, but I had been stuck in the winter, 10 days before Christmas. In the spring of 2020, the sun reached me, and I melted, smiling for real.
This week the theme was ‘water’. I took this theme and twisted it more into a ‘drowned’ theme, as I reflected on the things that happened throughout 2019. This is a longer piece, more of creative non-fiction. It is obviously a very sensitive and personal story of mine, but I wanted to finally tell it to the world, or at least let it out of myself.